L.S.,
To liberate storage space, I would like to offer the following plant fossils for trade. All specimens below come from the Late Carboniferous of the Piesberg quarry near Osnabrück (Germany). Scale on photographs in centimetres (1 inch = 2.54 cm). Specimens B, C, F and G show neuropterid fronds of various sizes (most likely Laveineopteris rarinervis). Note specimens B and G were recovered broken and have been glued/repaired. Specimen E is a large plate and shows reproductive structures of Calamites (E-1), a Laveineopteris frond (E-2), a strap-like Cordaites leaf, and some Annularia-like leaf whorls. If interested, I could also offer the counterpart of E. If preferable, I can cut specimen F to size (currently large slab of rock for the actual imprint). In general, please note that these specimens are rather large and heavy (I will cover the shipping costs, but you will need space to display these pieces). In return, I would be mainly interested in plant fossils from the Devonian to Cretaceous (but feel free to offer younger material also).
Kind regards,
Tim
Specimen B:
Specimen C:
Specimen E:
Specimen F:
Specimen G:

Hi guys! Long story short, a rather large collection of Mazon Creek fossils has been donated to my university. I thought I'd share some pictures of the collection and confirm some preliminary identifications. There are a lot of specimens so I will probably split this into two posts.
Annularia radiata
Annularia stellata
A whole bunch of Annularia stellata?

These 2 are part of a many (50 or more) fossils/imprints I found in a creek bed on a visit this summer to our family farm in Ritchie County, WV. Since we're going back for a visit next week, I thought I'd try to ID these now and look for more while I'm there again.
The bulk of the fossils/imprints I've ID'd as ferns, and maybe lycophytes (if my research so far is correct) but can't find anything on the imprints in the attached photos. I'm new to plant fossils, so would appreciate some help in ID'ing this set.
Here's what I know:
All the fossils/imprints I found, including the attached, were in the same 3-4 meter area along a shallow (1-1.5 meter high) creek bank in Ritchie County, WV;
They were found in thick sheets of wet, muddy shale; and
The 2 imprints in the photos fit into one another as a match/pair.
Here are my questions:
What are/were the 2 ovals that fit into one another in the photos?
Is there anything else of interest I should be noticing in the attached photos and/or in the other similar fossils/imprints I've found?
Note that the last photo are the 2 pieces flipped over.
Thanks in advance.

Hi everyone! I am new here, and a newbie to fossil collecting in general. I have a question I haven’t quite been able to find answers to by searching on the site. Hope this is the right on the forum place to ask....
I have some fossils I am thinking of displaying in a dry aquarium, and I would like to add live plants in with them. Is this OK for the fossils? Will the moisture from watering plants harm them at all or cause any problems? (They’ve made it millions of years and I don’t want to damage them after all this time!)
Thanks for any help!

Hi, all,
does anyone know where I can get/order some posters showing the Pennsylvanian forests? I am doing a presentation on plant fossils in Jan. and would like to accent it with art work,
thanks, Herb

I had the time today to make a new visit on the coal heap with few nice Neuropteris,pecopteris lepidodendron and Eusphenopteris finds
but on the way back i made a stop in a wine shop where a 80 famous french actor sign is bottles a good way to finish the day

I have a couple of rocks that look like seeds. What do you think? Do those look like bite marks on the one on the left? Let's hear your thoughts. The one on the right was in pea gravel at a playground in Iowa, I find fossil shell fossils in pea gravel sometimes. I'm not sure where I got the other one, in central Iowa.

Hello i went to the river today in central alberta and found these fossils i believe one is petrified wood but it also has a translucent mineral in it?? I think?? And orange mineral around it which i assume is sap amber??? the size of these rocks are around a baseball please help identify all of them and offer info ill greatly appreciate it first two pictures are of opposite sides same as the other two.

I showed Jeffery P the Jacksboro spillway on his swing through Texas and it was my day to find plants in this otherwise marine site. At least I think that both are plants.
First this piece with mm scale which I'm guessing could be Cordaites or Artisia pith.
Edge view
and close-up
and other side
Next this leaf which I think is one of the seed fern pinnules, also with mm scale
other side
end views
and side views
Does anyone agree and can you tell which of the seed ferns this could be?

Hi everybody, today is a sunny day here and all the past week was sunny.
I was in holidays on the boarders of the lake Salagou, which means in occitan (spoken in the south of France) salted taste.
This lake is artificial and represent a good reserve of water for the cultures and for the fight against fires.
It's soil is from the Permian and composed of red ruffes : clays very rich in oxides of iron.

Hello, I have been a long time member of the fossil forum, but I have never posted before. I live in south Florida and I am planning on making a trip up to northwestern Georgia, northeastern Alabama, and southeastern Tennessee for two or three days and I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on fossil hunting sites in the region. Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

My dad and I recently took a trip to collect plant fossils at two locales near Centralia, PA. Given that St. Clair is no longer accessible to collecting, we found that this area offered the next best option for collecting similar fossil ferns. We came away with a lot of large samples of Calamites sp., including several pith casts that just fell out of the rock. We also found a fair amount of Annularia, Neuropteris, and Pecopteris. Here are only a few of our best finds. I hope you enjoy. If you disagree on an identification, please let me know; I am still trying to identify everything.
Some Neuropteris from Centralia
What looks to be the bark of Sigillaria

I collected some small nodules last week and when I tried to open this one the top split to reveal this.
I decided to hit the larger part one more time to see if I could uncover the rest. Instead the larger piece split in half and this is what was inside the same nodule. Are these annularia? They are very different from the other fossil I found in the right picture which I am pretty sure is annularia.

I hadn't blogged in a while, but here's my latest excursion (I have more but I'll have to dig up the information, and some are still pending field work/research)
On July 5th I went for a drive down Beaumont, in the Memramcook region in South-Eastern New Brunswick (Canada), to check how bad the road along the coast had eroded with time since the last time I went down there rock picking. I stopped in a few places to check on the rocks down the beach wherever I could go down, and spotted the cliffs of Dorchester Cape across the Memramcook river. Hopped in the car and proceeded to make the short few kilometers trek to the other side.
Location indicator shows Dorchester Cape on the map (Google Maps)
Location of the cliffs
The geology of the area is mostly formed of Upper Carboniferous rocks, and the location I was at is mostly Boss Point formation. The Boss Point formation is also found in Cape Enrage, Rockport, and Upper Joggins, to name a few places. The fossils that I find at the Dorchester Cape site is mostly discombobulate plant material, with dark grey to tan sandstones with some sandy conglomerate boulders lying about. Chunks of gypsum and some Albertite can be seen on the beach, as evaporites abound in the Albert Mines area, and some other unspecified locations in the Memramcook area. Albertite, and then gypsum, were an important part of the local economy, especially in Hillsborough across the river, as the geology of the surrounding area sees large deposits of various evaporites, a relic of the ancient Windsor Sea which would have receeded, giving way to vast forests and rivers.
But what was most important for Dorchester Cape was the copper found in the sedimentary rocks. This copper ore, chalcocite, was discovered in the late 1860s and mined until all operations came to a stop before the First Great War.
Dorchester Copper Mine. K. Vanderwolf. New Brunswick Museum.
From Memramcook, I drove down the 106 towards Dorchester. Once in the village, you take the 935, which is Cape Road, heading towards Dorchester Cape. The road turns into a dirt road about 2 clicks after the train tracks. Turn into the dirt road across the Atlantic Industries Limited business site. Make your way down the road, avoiding pot holes and man made roadblocks, and you'll eventually reach the old wharf.
Make your way South (left of the wharf) and head towards the cliffs near Cole Point.
Looking back, view of Fort Folly Point slicing Shepody Bay.
As we get closer to the rock cliffs, you can already spot coal and petrified wood on the beach.
The plant fossils are mostly fragmented, showing signs of turbulence. There's some micro faulting in some places, and large sections of the cliffs are coming down in large segments.
Plastered with plants/tree parts (hat for scale)
The beach is littered with petrified wood, plant fossils, and chunks of coal.
Middle section replaced with orange calcite crystals
Some pieces are quite large (dirty hat for scale)
Common theme: plants sticking out to catch some Sun
One of the few holes where trees used to lie in situ
The cliffs have coal seams that can reach a few inches thick.
Tree imprint
Nice tree sticking out (squished hat for scale)
Close to the tree
NOT sand (chances of lithification?)

Hi all,
My friends recently visited Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia. While they were there they went on a fossil hunt with a geologist who curates the local museum.
They were told that they could collect the small, loose stuff, and so brought back plenty of nice fossils.
They gave a couple specimens to me, and I’m just wondering about IDing them. There are a lot of Calamites fossils among what they brought back, but I’m having trouble with the rest. I live in the Ordovician and don’t have a lot of experience with Carboniferous flora except finding a few pretties in Pittsburgh.
First pic (1) has what they were told is an early seed cone. Can anyone corroborate and specify species? I was looking at Lepidostrobus but the shape seems different.
Second pic (2) is one of the fossils they gave me. They thought that the top left might be part of a seed cone but I think it’s Annularia. Thoughts? And are those oval-shaped leaves Pecopteris ? Alethopteris ?
And just for fun, I’ll add a couple more pictures (see comments) if anyone wants to have at it.
Anyways, thanks!

Hello everyone, I have a small collection that I picked up on a trip to Kentucky...the area around hazard. I think its the Breathitt formation. Pennsylvanian period. I have been in the process of Identifying them. I think I have a decent lock on some of them, but could use a little help on a few. I should add some more photos of 3 and 4. Let me know if you need anything specific (close up on a certain area, or what have you).

This weekend I went on another fossil hunting trip with my dad. We went to a place called Bacchus Marsh which is around 65 km east of Melbourne. Here we went looking for Tertiary plant fossils such as Laurus and Cinnamonum. The site was a creek bed under an old bridge. The bridge was located next to the Western Freeway which connects Bacchus Marsh to Melbourne, and extends north to south, eventually emptying into the Werribee river (about 2km away). The creek also goes under the freeway through two tunnels and you can look for fossils on both sides of the freeway, but the side near the bridge had the best rocks. The rocks we looked for were Ferruginous sandstones which are late Paleocene (59 million) to Middle Miocene (14 million). The creek was dry and it didn't look there had been water in it for a long time.

Considering the length of time they lived it seems there are not just too few but unbelievably few species that people have discovered, don't you agree ? Also this leads me to the question which I could not find an answer to in google... that must mean something. How did the biological variety change though the course of the planets history. Is there a way we can know, were there more animal and plant species 1, 10, 100 million years ago?

Hello!
I want to tell you about my fossil hunting trip in Checkarda canyon. It's located near Perm city, in Ural region.
First I flew to Perm from Moscow. After I met my friends and we went to first point of our trip. We decided to reach paleo-site on the boat
The russian village avoids after some times
We slowly floated downstream and moored near the field. We saw crushed pine, it stayed as label)
This place is famous for its plant's fossils (ferns, ginkgo, etc), but I realy wanted insect's fossils.